Sarah Collins is combating hunger and empowering a generation of women around the world with a simple slow cooker. The device is filled with repurposed foam chips and covered in fabric designed by local fashion and textile designers.

After two successful Food Startup Bootcamps in New York City and Washington, D.C., Local Food Lab is heading to San Francisco on January 10th to host our next one-day, hands-on business course designed for sustainable food entrepreneurs.

Unfortunately, co-mans are not easy to find. Their websites are usually designed for people already in-the-know. Descriptions of their processes often use strange terms like “flexible pouch retort”, “extrusion facility”, or “form and fill sealers”. When you do find the one that makes sense for your product, it's a challenge just to get them to call you back!

Andrea Talley is the founder of the recently crowd funded, green smoothie startup, GreenLid. Since founding GreenLid, Andrea moved to San Francisco from Washington DC, found a temporary home at food startup incubator 331 Cortland in Bernal Heights and is working on expanding her offerings to include salads and wraps.

By now you have probably heard the term pop-up. You might not know what a pop-up is or how they function but the concept is becoming widespread around the world. But pop-ups are not a brand new hipster creation. In fact, pop-ups have been around for millennia—but they’ve only recently become mainstream.

In the past 4-5 years, I’ve come across a lot of food entrepreneurs who have ideas for new products, platforms or services. Many are smart and motivated individuals, entrepreneurs who are passionate about what they want to do and have the vision to make it happen. Too often though, these same entrepreneurs are hamstrung by the process of raising money from investors.

A former jazz pianist and corporate lawyer, Jack began his path into the food industry with the goal of giving cornbread the "reboot" it deserved. After working with an accomplished cornbread chef, Jeff developed his own untraditional cornbread recipes such as jalapeno, maple bacon, honey sea salt and garlic chive cornbread.